Maine has been participating in Buckle Up America! Week this week because, although dozens of studies report that seat belts save lives, many people still don’t use them or maintain unfounded fears about them. The Buckle Up America! Week is designed to convert nonusers. According to its law, Maine doesn’t insist that all of America buckle up, just those 16 years old and younger, but these things take time.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has taken to more graphically describing the need for seat belts by dividing an accident into two collisions. In the first, an automobile strikes another object, stopping the auto abruptly; in the second, the unbelted passengers, who have been moving right along with the auto, keep moving until they hit something solid, like a dashbord or windshield. It’s the second collision that the week’s sponsors have been trying to prevent.

More than 10,500 lives have been saved since 1984 as a direct result of seat-belt-use laws, according to the Highway Administration. Almost as important, Americans are realizing that wearing a seat belt isn’t such a hardship, with 75 percent of people polled by a group called Traffic Safety Now earlier this year favoring seat-belt laws, and 50 percent of the respondents saying that they “always” wear a seat belt when riding in a car. Only 37 percent of the respondents (compared with 46 percent in 1985) said that seat belts often trap people in their vehicles.

Sometime next week the Highway Administration will report how many of us died in auto accidents during the Memorial Day weekend. The grim national statistic will be in the hundreds for just the next three days. Though no one can say whose name will be on the list, there’s a good way of ensuring that yours won’t be one of them: wear your seat belt.